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Costs and Complexities Sink Armstrong’s Testing Plan

Nearly five months after Lance Armstrong announced with great fanfare that he was returning to cycling and would subject himself to a strict and transparent individual antidoping program, that program has been abandoned without ever beginning.

Don Catlin, the prominent antidoping scientist who was supposed to run Armstrong’s program, said Wednesday that they had decided earlier in the day to part ways, without Catlin’s analyzing a single blood or urine sample from Armstrong. The program was too complex and too costly, Catlin said, and the decision to terminate it was mutual.

“In the real world, when you try to implement a program as grandiose as what you had in mind, it just becomes so complicated that it’s better not to try,” Catlin said, adding that a contract with Armstrong had never been signed. “We’re all disappointed, but it’s just not going to be possible.”

Armstrong’s agent, Bill Stapleton, said that Armstrong would continue to be tested by the internal antidoping program of his professional cycling team, Astana. That program is run by Rasmus Damsgaard, a Danish antidoping research scientist. Stapleton said that Damsgaard had tested Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France winner, about two or three times since December.

“We talked about trying to do some extra testing, but for now Lance is part of that program,” Stapleton said, adding that Armstrong would also be tested out of competition by the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the International Cycling Union. “We respect Don, but it became apparent that there would be so many drug testers at Lance’s door that they would be tripping over each other.”

After Catlin announced that Armstrong’s personal antidoping program was over, Armstrong’s Web site, www.livestrong.com, posted seven of Armstrong’s basic test results that have been compiled since he rejoined the testing pool in August. His Web site said that since he returned to cycling, Armstrong has been tested 17 times.

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Don Catlin in 2004. Catlin is the former chief of the UCLA Olympic Analytical laboratory. Credit
Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Still, Armstrong, who has been dogged by doping allegations throughout his career, made his private antidoping program one of the cornerstones of his comeback. He will begin racing Saturday at the Tour of California, which will be his first major cycling race in the United States since he said he would retire in 2005.

Before the Tour Down Under in Australia last month, Armstrong said that his customized antidoping program was under way, but he began to back off his initial announcement to publish all of his biological data online. A news release by Astana on Jan. 18, the first day of the race, said that Armstrong would be tested about every three days by Catlin’s program. At that point, Catlin said, Astana had paid him a “small contribution” to begin taking samples.

Only one sample was taken, said Oliver Catlin, the chief executive of the Anti-Doping Sciences Institute, Don Catlin’s for-profit laboratory based near Los Angeles.

Asked about the program’s details, Armstrong said that Don Catlin, the former chief of the U.C.L.A. Olympic Analytical Laboratory, would answer all the questions.

Details of the program remained a mystery, fueling criticism. Dick Pound, the former chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said last week: “Armstrong made all the big announcements, and the testing has dropped right off the radar. No sign that anything is actually getting done.”

Since September, when Catlin accompanied Armstrong at news conferences announcing his return to cycling, Catlin had not returned or responded to more than a dozen phone calls and e-mail messages — until Wednesday.

Catlin said he and Armstrong’s representatives had been trying to come to an agreement about the program, but the closer the season came, the harder it was to solidify the details. Slowly, the comprehensive program — which Armstrong had promoted as “the most advanced antidoping program in the world” — was being watered down because of logistical problems and cost restrictions.

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Lance Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France winner, in the recent Tour Down Under.Credit
Brandon Malone/Reuters

Armstrong had promised that all the biological data collected by Catlin would be posted on the Internet, a move that Catlin said was necessary to make the program completely transparent. But at the Tour Down Under, Armstrong’s first race out of retirement, he said he was worried that publishing all his biological data would prompt unfair questions about him from the public. A layman would probably not be able to understand complex information, he said, adding that there are natural fluctuations in some blood levels when a rider travels to a high altitude.

“Not everyone in this room is going to say that means I must have cheated,” he said in a news conference. “But a few of you say it was suspicious.”

In September, Catlin said, “The key is to have the information out there for the public to see and to analyze, because it shows you have nothing to hide.”

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In recent months, Catlin’s and Armstrong’s representatives discussed limiting the biological information that would be made public. “When you start reducing that kind of program and limiting what you put on the Web, it was difficult to figure out how to accomplish it without running into enormous legal and media issues,” Catlin said.

Catlin said he was still running the antidoping programs for two professional cycling teams, Team Columbia and Garmin-Slipstream. He said those programs were going well and were easier to handle because they were not the comprehensive doping program of a single athlete.

“There are so many people lining up to test cyclists right now,” Catlin said.

Testing in all sports has increased since Armstrong retired in 2005, changing the landscape for athletes hoping to prove they are clean. The cycling union, for example, has a program that collects biological information on each rider and uses it to gauge whether a rider is doping.

Armstrong has been subject to out-of-competition tests for about six months since deciding to return to competition. According to Erin Hannan, the spokeswoman for Usada, some American athletes were tested as many as 15 to 20 times out of competition last year in about a six-month period.

Some athletes, including the swimmer Natalie Coughlin and the decathlete Bryan Clay, were part of a trial program that used four to six blood and urine tests to create an initial baseline for the athletes’ biological profiles, Hannan said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: Costs and Complexities Sink Armstrong’s Testing Plan. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe